ACLU, women voters group seek to intervene in Trump DOJ suit over KY voter info
A coalition of Kentucky civic and activist groups are asking a federal court to block the U.S. Department of Justice from obtaining detailed information on Kentucky voters.
The League of Women Voters of Kentucky, the New Americans Initiative and two individual voters say the DOJ’s attempts to access voters’ personal information, including driver’s license numbers or partial Social Security numbers, amount to a breach of privacy.
The groups are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, per an ACLU press release.
The groups are seeking to intervene in the DOJ’s suit against Kentucky’s Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams, who has spoken against the Trump administration’s efforts to collect voter data.
“I will not voluntarily commit a data breach by providing Kentuckians’ personal data to the federal bureaucracy unless a court order tells me to,” Adams said late last month.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky in late February, naming Adams as well as members of the Kentucky State Board of Elections as defendants.
The New Americans Initiative, which serves foreign-born Kentuckians who are eligible for green cards and naturalization, is led by state Rep. Nima Kulkarni, D-Louisville.
In their release, the groups seeking to intervene in U.S. v. Adams said the DOJ’s efforts go against both state and federal law. The DOJ has brought similar suits in 28 other states, plus the District of Columbia.
“The Department of Justice is seeking access to highly sensitive voter information that states are legally obligated to protect. Requests like this create serious privacy risks and open the door to intimidation and illegal challenges to eligible voters,” Caren Short, director of legal and research for the League of Women Voters, wrote in the news release.
Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a statement last month that access to the data is essential to “ensure transparency.”
“Accurate, well-maintained voter rolls are a requisite for the election integrity that the American people deserve. This latest series of litigation underscores that this Department of Justice is fulfilling its duty to ensure transparency, voter roll maintenance, and secure elections across the country,” Bondi wrote.
Adams has asserted that Kentucky elections are a “national success story,” warning against giving away more than 3.3 million Kentucky voters’ sensitive information.
Intervenors argue that the DOJ’s actions could lead to disenfranchisement of voters.
“The Trump administration’s efforts to invasively access the sensitive data of voters is a serious threat to our democracy. When voters fear their personal information could be misused to target or disadvantage them, it chills civic engagement. We will challenge this overreach again and again,” Adriel I. Cepeda Derieux, deputy director for the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, wrote.
The motion cites reports that the DOJ intends to create a national voter database and use data-matching tools to identify voters — a process advocates warn could wrongly target naturalized citizens and others whose eligibility may not appear accurately in government records.
Scrutiny over how states administer their elections has been a common theme for President Donald Trump and his allies since 2020, when the president lost a reelection bid to Joe Biden and pressured one secretary of state to “find votes” to help him win. Since then, he has routinely claimed without evidence that he actually won the election.
